anger and resentment (your destiny suits me)
by 20Iolaire02
Summary: Petunia's thoughts about the world, and her sister's child's place in it.


**A/N: **So, in the language of flowers, Petunia apparently means anger and resentment, as well as "your destiny suits me", so I tried to write around that. For reference, Lily is purity - also found from the language of flowers. Vernon is pride, Dudley is popularity. Dumbledore is wisdom. Harry (of an unspecified gender, so you can read this as male or female Harry, whichever you prefer) is beauty. This is mostly canon compliant, though I don't remember much about Snape's and Lily's and Petunia's childhood, so that's a lot of guesswork. If the ages are wrong, feel free to let me know. Another note: Petunia is written to be very human. This means that she has human flaws and vices. This also means that she recognizes her flaws. So, there is no character bashing, though I don't approve of how the Dursleys raised Harry in canon.

* * *

She is twenty-two and counting, with a child of her own, and she opens the door to find a baby sleeping in the cold.

She is twelve and holding a letter inscribed with curling emerald ink, signed by wisdom, and the letter says _no_.

She is seven and hiding between branches and leaves, watching and waiting, because she wants sparks to dance across her fingers, too. She wants warmth to flow through her body, to light her up from the inside out.

She is eight and falling, the echo of a branch cracking through the air, and bitterness claws its way up her throat, grabs tight, and never quite lets go.

She is twenty-two and counting, and there is a child who represents what she can't have, who represents the death of purity, of goodness. There is a child who reminds her of everything she never was, everything she will never be, and resentment takes root in her chest. There is a child who reeks of dark, dangerous things, who reeks of death, despite the beauty in its face.

Anger courses through her veins: this is what comes from flying, from blooming. This is what comes from beauty.

She is not beautiful - has never been - and on this morning, with sharp wind and freezing cold biting at her face - she is glad of it.

The world takes beauty and steals it away, hides it in dark corners and binds it with stifling rules. The world tears it apart and buries the remains. She has stood by and watched it happen.

She turns her back on beauty.

She is twenty-two and counting, and she looks at the child on her doorstep, and she turns her back, hides her love, buries it deep in the darkness.

This is what the world does with beauty. She is of the world.

She is twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, and she has made herself anew.

There is no longer andy softness, any love, any kindness - after all, those are beautiful things, and beautiful things don't belong in a world such as this - and she is devoid of warmth.

Instead, rage and anger, bitterness and resentment, flow through her veins like ice.

Anger and resentment have their own sort of beauty - cold and hard and unforgiving - and it is the only kind this world accepts.

Her anger and resentment make her beautiful - they make her strong - like fire or lightning. She tells herself that she is beautiful, late at night, because there is still a part of her…

There is still a part of her that looks to the past for guidance. There is stall a part of her that remembers the beauty stamped out by the world, that remembers wanting to _be_ beautiful.

But remembering is for late nights, shrouded by darkness.

Remembering, she thinks once upon a time, is loneliness. She remembers purity, but it has left this world. She remembers joy, but it, too, lays buried beneath the stars and the sky and the earth.

Purity, like beauty, like joy, does not belong in this cruel world. It is something she repeats to herself for years before beginning to believe it.

She will not harbor beauty in her home, not willingly, and so she does her best to hide it, to squash it, to turn it as ugly is the rest of the world.

She is thirty-two when she realizes that the world will always find that which it wishes to destroy.

The world - in thundering footsteps and squashed cakes and strange rain barriers and sparks - steals the only remaining beauty in the world from beneath her nose.

And she shatters.

Beauty abandons her, just as purity did so long ago, and when it returns, she is almost blinded by it.

She deserves this blinding, she knows. After all, she has done nothing with this piece of beauty than hide it and use it. She has felt nothing but shame every time she looked at it, and she has strangled it with darkness and lies and fear.

If there is one thing this broken, shattered world loves, it is fear, for fear is darkness and death. Fear is strangling emotions, throats at necks, and bruising grips. Fear is dark dungeons and desperation and hate and secrets.

Fear is hiding and begging and killing and running, and it lies in every street, lurks in every corner, watching. It has its own sort of terrible beauty - something too dangerous, too emotional and volatile to be anything else.

But it is not soft like true beauty. It is not warmth and life and love.

Beauty leaves her every year, and she can't bring herself to beg for its presence. She has lost enough already. She has lost purity and protection and caring. She is losing pride and popularity, slowly. She will not lose beauty more than she has to.

And really, beauty never belonged to her, anyway.

So every year, beauty leaves and returns, and every year it is a little darker, a little bit tainted. It hurts to stand by and watch, to stand by and do nothing, to stand _by_, but she is filled to overflowing with anger, brimming with resentment, and she will not touch beauty with such ugly things.

She has stood by her entire life. Why should she stop now?

But she does stop, doesn't she, when beauty comes home with trauma ingrained in its bones, sorrow lingering in its eyes, and every breath is drawn with a shaking sort of deliberation.

She stops when fear comes to town, dark and violent and cold, and leaves popularity trembling and ill on the ground. She doesn't stop on her own, of course. It is wisdom, who is equal parts kind and terrible, who convinces her, who reminds her. And so she stops, but it marked with a sort of resentment; she should have stopped when she was ready.

Beauty leaves her again, and returns carrying the ungrateful world on its shoulders, returns carrying death and secrets and lies, nearly crumbling beneath the weight.

For the first time in a long time, her anger and resentment are focused on the world, not beauty. But she is tired, and beauty can't see the difference, and they are all just as lost as they have always been.

And the world grows darker and crueler, threatening to swallow everyone and everything in it, threatening to devour them, and she is anger and resentment, yes, but she is also _fear_, and it is not her own fear, and she despises it. So she is anger and resentment and fear and hate, and the fire that is created within her keeps her warm against the icy winds of terror.

Wisdom comes to collect beauty again, and they leave together, abandoning her again to go out in search of beauty's destiny, and she is left alone, miserable and cold, her anger no longer enough to warm her.

She knows nothing for months, until beauty returns to her life. She learns that wisdom is gone from the world, and something like despair creeps into her chest and crushes her heart in its hand. She feels lost and alone, and she is unable to speak to beauty. She is unable to do anything that isn't routine, and her life feels empty and lacking, and fear's grip on her gets stronger every day.

Beauty is taken to safety one day, and she and popularity and pride are hidden elsewhere, and she doesn't know where beauty has gone, doesn't know what's happened, doesn't know if beauty has met death, or safety, just as she doesn't know what will become of the world.

She does the only thing she can do: she pushes aside her anger and resentment and fear, and she hopes, and then she overwhelms herself again.

She never really sees beauty again, but one day she is free, and she looks at the world, and it seems a little less unkind, a little less dangerous. It is not perfect, but very little is.

All her life, she has been afraid of fate, afraid of what the future would bring. She admires beauty's determination in facing destiny, despite everything standing in the way.

Beauty has saved her, has saved the world, and when she thinks about it, she feels softer. She is less anger-filled, less burned by resentment. In her own way, she is beautiful, like a flower. In her own way, she is beautiful, like anger, like everything in the world - the world included - is beautiful, with a sort of harsh, hard-won, sharpness. Shattered, broken, put back together and shining bright under the sun.

Beauty has changed her anger and resentment into something almost delicate and soft, and for the first time in her life, she understands what it means to be beautiful.


End file.
